…wants to automatically replace words in books with synonyms.

Amazon (for which Virago is a perfectly acceptable synonym, both having at least one sense referring to a large, agressive woman) has patented a ‘System and Method for Marking Content’. This “programmatically” substitutes synonyms into (electronic) text like books, reviews, news articles etc so that they can trace back the source of any illegally distributed material. I assume electronic text, anyway, unless they’re cracking down on the dastardly lending-printed-book-to-friend black market.

This is similar to the random pattern of dots overlayed on cinema reels to identify which specific reel was the one set loose as an illegal DVD copy or which cinema management was slack on spotting recording devices, except that instead of changing the movie-goer’s experience by irritating them with dots, they change the movie-goer’s experience by splicing in minute scene alterations – without even subjecting the process to a human eye to see just how annoying and wrong the change is.

Would a reasonable human say virago is an acceptable substitute for amazon? No, no way – the words may have the same meaning by a dictionary match, if you go down the list of meanings for each far enough, but they have substantially different senses in most people’s minds. Such a substitution would change the way the character so described is perceived.

Screw it, I shouldn’t even have to give an example of why this is so bad. I’m not making the claim that I choose every single word in my books with conscious care, but I certainly pay attention to nuances of meanings and to the rhythm of the sentences, and Virago (and not the perfectly well-behaved publishing imprint either) is tromping all over that with this system.

The patent also includes using “alternative misspellings for selected words”. Yes. That typo? That typo is not my fault. That was Virago the Giant Online Retailer.

If they’re that worried about pirates, why not adopt the system proposed by…that guy whose name I don’t remember…who said to flood the pirate market with error-riddled copies of whatever product, some only 10% different, some 90% different, so that people helping themselves to illegal material never know how true and reliable their copy is and it becomes easier to buy the appropriately priced legal material. That’s a system amenable to programmatic implementation.

That was the first time I’ve ever spelled rhythm correctly on the first go.